scripturae Dei det honorem. The CSEL text reads . . . non potest scripturam, Deo det
Book I 187 so concerned, should be written offand consigned to the waste paperbasket as so many ignoramuses.
Whenever, you see, they catch out some members of the Christian commu nity making mistakes on a subject which they know inside out, and defending their hollow opinions on the authority of our books, on what grounds are they going to trust those books on the resurrection of the dead and the hope of eternal life and the kingdom of heaven, when they suppose they include any number of mistakes and fallacies on matters which they themselves have been able to master either by experiment or by the surest of calculations? It is impossible to say what trouble and grief such rash, self-assured know-alls cause the more cautious and experienced brothers and sisters. Whenever they find themselves challenged and taken to task for some shaky and false theory of theirs by people who do not recognize the authority of our books, they try to defend what they have aired with the most frivolous temerity and patent falsehood by bringing forward these same sacred books to justify it. Or they even quote from memory many things said in them which they imagine will provide them with valid evidence, not understanding either what they are saying, or the matters on which they are asserting themselves (1 Tm 1:7).
Stating all possible meanings by way ofquestions
20, 40. It is in order to take account of this state ofthings that I have, to the best of my ability, winkled out and presented a great variety of possible meanings to the words of the book of Genesis which have been darkly expressed in order to put us through our paces. I have avoided affirming anything hastily in a way that would rule out any alternative explanation that may be a better one, so leaving everyone free to choose whichever they can grasp most readily in their turn, and when they cannot understand, let them give honor to God's scripture,25 keeping fear for themselves. But since the words of scripture that we have been dealing with can be explained along so many lines, let those people now restrain them selves, who are so puffed up with their knowledge of secular literature, that they scornfully dismiss as something crude and unrefined these texts which are all expressed in a way designed to nourish devout hearts.26 You could say they are crawling along the ground without wings, and poking fun at the nests of birds that are going to fly.
Some of the weaker brothers and sisters, however, are in danger of going astray more seriously when they hear these godless people holding forth
25. So the Maurists, with the support of most manuscripts, reading ubi intelligere non potest, scripturae Dei det honorem. The CSEL text reads . . . non potest scripturam, Deo det honorem—where they cannot understand the scripture, let them give honor to God. 26. The sort of person he had been himself before his conversion.